Elevated stress impairs the accuracy of eyewitness memory but not the confidence–accuracy relationship.

Author(s):  
Kathy Pezdek ◽  
Erica Abed ◽  
Anne Cormia
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher D. Kimbrough ◽  
Brian H. Bornstein ◽  
Heather Bryden

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Philip Kaesler ◽  
John C Dunn ◽  
Keith Ransom ◽  
Carolyn Semmler

The debate regarding the best way to test and measure eyewitness memory has dominated the eyewitness literature for more than thirty years. We argue that to resolve this debate requires the development and application of appropriate measurement models. In this study we develop models of simultaneous and sequential lineup presentations and use these to compare the procedures in terms of discriminability and response bias. We tested a key prediction of the diagnostic feature detection hypothesis that discriminability should be greater for simultaneous than sequential lineups. We fit the models to the corpus of studies originally described by Palmer and Brewer (2012, Law and Human Behavior, 36(3), 247-255) and to data from a new experiment. The results of both investigations showed that discriminability did not differ between the two procedures, while responses were more conservative for sequential presentation compared to simultaneous presentation. We conclude that the two procedures do not differ in the efficiency with which they allow eyewitness memory to be expressed. We discuss the implications of this for the diagnostic feature detection hypothesis and other sequential lineup procedures used in current jurisdictions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergii Yaremenko ◽  
Melanie Sauerland ◽  
Lorraine Hope

AbstractThe circadian rhythm regulates arousal levels throughout the day and determines optimal periods for engaging in mental activities. Individuals differ in the time of day at which they reach their peak: Morning-type individuals are at their best in the morning and evening types perform better in the evening. Performance in recall and recognition of non-facial stimuli is generally superior at an individual’s circadian peak. In two studies (Ns = 103 and 324), we tested the effect of time-of-testing optimality on eyewitness identification performance. Morning- and evening-type participants viewed stimulus films depicting staged crimes and made identification decisions from target-present and target-absent lineups either at their optimal or non-optimal time-of-day. We expected that participants would make more accurate identification decisions and that the confidence-accuracy and decision time-accuracy relationships would be stronger at optimal compared to non-optimal time of day. In Experiment 1, identification accuracy was unexpectedly superior at non-optimal compared to optimal time of day in target-present lineups. In Experiment 2, identification accuracy did not differ between the optimal and non-optimal time of day. Contrary to our expectations, confidence-accuracy relationship was generally stronger at non-optimal compared to optimal time of day. In line with our predictions, non-optimal testing eliminated decision-time-accuracy relationship in Experiment 1.


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